Music Downloads & Lyrics
Gag. Hello nerds. I'm currently very
red. I'm in the monster catat studio and
I've asked my supporters on Patreon what
kind of topics they would like to see
some videos about and there have been
tons of requests. It's awesome. Some are
very specific and some are just about
stuff like how do I side chain? And even
though to some of you that might be a
very basic thing, I think you deserve to
know. So today let me show you exactly
how I side chain and why some of it
might look a little weird at first. So a
lot of effects like a compressor for
example react to the incoming audio. A
compressor just lowers the volume of the
incoming audio by whatever you set it
to. And side trading just means that
instead of reacting to the audio that
it's putting its effect on, its
compression, it's reacting to different
audio. In this case, just as a quick
example, I have a drum loop and a pad
here. And right now, there's a
compressor on the pad that does just
what a regular compressor does. It
reacts to the pad's volume and
compresses it and adjusts it. But
instead, I could say, "Hey, compressor,
react to the audio from the drums, but
apply whatever you hear from the drums
as compression to this
pad." That is side chaining in its most
basic form. And some effects might not
just react to the incoming audio's
volume, they might also react to the
frequency content. And then suddenly
whatever you side chain it with can
dramatically change the sound of the
effect. But this case of side chaining
where you use it in the compressor to
have the compressor react to something
different than what it is affecting is
the classic way of how the pumping
effect in EDM drums has been achieved
for years. But obviously there are other
methods to do this and more precise
methods because a compressor has an
attack time and a release time. It needs
a little bit of time to react to the
incoming audio's volume to do its volume
adjustment. So there are other ways to
do this. For example, just volume
shaping. I can literally go and just
automate the volume of this pad down
whenever there's a kick drum or a snare
drum happening here in the drums. This
is very tedious but very precise. And I
know some people do it like that. And
there's nothing wrong with it. Let me
just set this up real quick for
fun. Like that totally
works and gives us a similar effect to
when we use the compressor with the side
chain input, but now it's a lot more
precise. The volume doesn't react to all
these little percussions in the drum
loop. So, that's a valid way of side
chaining, quote unquote. But to save you
from the hassle of having to automate
the volume by hand, there are plugins
like volume shaper. I'm just using
Shaper Box, which is the more advanced
version with more effects, but I'm just
using the volume shaper part of it. And
here, we can make a little volume
automation curve, and then tell it to
just trigger this whenever I have a MIDI
signal being sent to Shaper Box. So, in
my standard project file setup, I have a
drum rack at the top that's just meant
for kicks and snares. Another one for
symbols, then a group for bases, a group
for synths, a group for samples, but
everything except the kick and snare
track here is being sent to an audio
track that I call side chain, which is
set to input monitoring. So, whatever I
send here is just going to the output.
For example, this serum here, you can
see how the volume meter moves down here
as well because the audio is getting
sent from serum to the bass group. bass
group sends it to the side chain track.
Side chain track is on input monitoring.
So beautiful that works. Sound goes
through and same with the massive here
in the synth group. It goes from this
massive track to the synths group and
then to the side chain group. So
everything in my project file except the
kick and snare has to go through this
audio track where I have a shaper box.
Now below my side chain group, there is
a MIDI track I called trigger that has
no instrument on it. I just told it to
send the MIDI information to the side
chain audio track and then Ableton
immediately detects, hey, there is a
plugin here called Shaperbox that can
accept MIDI information. Cool. So now it
can make a MIDI clip down here. And
whenever there's a note plate on this
MIDI track, it's going to trigger this
side chain volume automation. Here's a
quick example where I've got a little
loop up
here. And now I'm turning on my little
trigger MIDI track down here.
Nice. This way, this volume automation
triggering or side chaining, if we still
want to call it that, happens
instantaneously. There's no attack time
that a compressor would have, and I can
very precisely uh shape the release
behavior, how fast the volume is
supposed to come back up, and in what
kind of shape. And the other bonus you
get by doing it this way, especially
with my setup here, if I have a drum
pattern with kicks and snares, I'm just
going to make something real quick. Then
I can just take this MIDI clip up
here and copy it onto my uh trigger
track down
there. I'm just going to make this a
little more drastic so it's easier to
hear. And then if I decide to make any
changes up here, I can just copy it over
again to update my trigger track. And
voila, I don't need to worry about any
complicated
automations. This also allows for easy
adjustments. Let's say I don't want this
volume ducking to happen on the snare.
Then I can just go in here and delete
all the notes that were the snare. And
now it'll only duck when there's a kick
drum playing. But if you have a keen
eye, you might have noticed something
strange over here on the right side.
This neg 5 milliseconds thing. So this
column over here is the track delay. You
can move tracks forward and backwards in
time. Just so you can hear it if I make
this loop
late. Now that's out of sync. And you
used to be able to make this visible
with some buttons down here that Ableton
12 has sadly removed. But you can find
this under view, arrangement, track
controls, track options. If I turn that
off, oop, they're gone. Uh, let's bring
them back. And this way I can actually
have this volume ducking happen a little
bit early. And just 5 milliseconds is
just short enough where you don't really
notice it. But what it does for me is it
makes everything absolutely quiet right
before the kick or the snare transient
starts just to make sure there's no
overlap. and that the drum transients
are really clean. In addition to this,
in my volume shaper setup, I do give it
a slight fade in down here. If you look
into this bar down here, while I'm
moving this point, you can see how many
milliseconds away from the start this
point is. I can be like, "Hey, let's set
you to about 4 milliseconds." So,
there's a 4 millisecond period here
where it brings the volume down smoothly
and then it's absolutely quiet. So that
will match up perfectly with my 5
millisecond early trigger. So that by
the time the kick and the snare happen,
this volume automation has reached
absolute zero and everything is quiet
and the kick and the snare can come
through perfectly. This fade has another
very important reason because especially
with bass music like dubstep and drum
and bass and all of that kind of stuff,
we got a lot of subheavy stuff. And I'm
just going to for demonstrational
purposes make a sub over here. So, I've
made a little sub and I've set Shaper
Box to just play this back in sync at
quarter notes. And now you will be able
to hear that if the start of this curve
just goes straight
down, depending on what point the
waveform of the sub is at. If it's like
at an absolute high or an absolute low
and not in the center at zero, then this
straight downwards volume automation is
going to create a little click.
And we can avoid that by maybe just
giving it 4 milliseconds of fade
in. That sounds a lot nicer. So, back to
MIDI mode. And I'm going to turn my
trigger track back on.
So, not only have we made sure that
everything is absolutely quiet right
before the kick and the snare hit, but
also we've made sure that any loud
subbases aren't going to be cut off and
create a click, which might overlap with
the kick and snare transient and make it
sound weird or cancel it out in a funny
way. Nice. So, that's all cool and nice,
but there is another way of side
chaining that I use in addition to this
called ring mod side chaining. And this
is going to get a little more nerdy and
a little more intense. And I'll try to
explain it as quickly and easily as
possible, but it is kind of some
blackmagic stuff and it's really cool.
And especially for heavy electronic
music, I found it to be a really cool
addition to regular side chaining. So,
check this out. This is my kick and
snare. And this is everything else.
Right now there's no side chaining, no
volume ducking happening. And one of the
reasons why we do this volume ducking is
because if this plays together at the
same time, then in the moments the kick
and the snare hit, these amplitudes are
going to add up and that's going to get
very loud. Like you can see the kick and
the snare are hitting zero and
everything else is also hitting zero. So
together that's going to clip. So,
wouldn't it be cool if you could sort of
remove the waveform of the snare and the
kick from the waveform of everything
else? And what would that look like?
Well, I can show you down here because
this is the result of removing the kick
and the snare out of everything else.
First of all, this is what it sounds
like. So, it sounds like some weird
crunchy distortion happening, especially
when the kick hits. And if we zoom in,
you can kind of see how this is still
this, but kind of minus that. Whenever
the kick, for example, is at an absolute
maximum or minimum, the rest gets really
quiet, there's still a little bit of
noise left, but it's basically making
sure that in the moments where the kick
goes to absolute top or absolute bottom,
which both still count as high
amplitude, the rest gets made really
quiet. And only in these moments where
there is some wiggle room left like
especially here in the center, this
means absolute silence. So everything
else can be as loud as it usually is.
And this should be exactly that. Yep,
that looks pretty much exactly the same,
especially at the center. So this
process of ring mod side chaining is
basically modulating the amplitude of
everything else based on the actual
waveform of the kick and the snare. Over
here at the snare, we can also see
there's only little bits coming through
whenever there's a zero crossing in the
snare. But the fantastic thing is now if
I play the kick and the snare together
with everything else, but with this ring
mod side chaining effect on it, it's not
going to go over zero because it's
making sure that everything else is
turned down exactly as much as is needed
to make sure that together everything
never goes over zero. It's removing the
kick and the snare as waveforms from
everything else. In a way, it's not
phase inverting it into it. That would
then cancel out the kick and the snare.
It's just modulating the volume always
down to the waveform center, which is
zero in silence. Uh, whenever there's
something happening here on the kick or
the snare, a quick listening comparison.
This is just regular playing both at the
same
time. And now the ring mod side chain
method.
You can definitely hear the crunch that
is happening to everything else,
especially when the kick plays. But I
use this method in combination together
with the regular volume ducking. So, I'm
going to show you how this is set up in
my project file. And first, I just want
to demonstrate to you that the kick and
the
snare hit the master at pretty much
exactly zero. So right before clipping
and everything else which is all going
through my side chain track
here is also exactly at zero because I'm
using a clipper here. And obviously
together that will now start
clipping quite drastically up to plus 6
and it distorts. And if I turn on the
ring mod side chain and just play it
again, it doesn't clip. The kick and the
snare come through way better. And we do
have a little bit of crunchy distortion
happening, which does sound kind of
cool. And maybe we can mitigate that by
just adding some shaper box volume
automation on top at the end. Maybe this
doesn't even have to be like at 100%
strength. This could maybe be at 75%.
And then with that on
top, kick and snare come through like
crazy. Nothing is clipping. And I think
for heavy music, this is a really cool
way of of doing the whole side chain
setup. So, how does the ring mod side
chain work? Um, this is a little much,
but I'm going try to go through it as
quickly as possible while still making
it understandable. So, what I have here
is an audio effect rack with three
different chains. One is just empty.
This is just letting the sound of
everything else come through unaffected.
And then another chain that is on has a
ring modulator on it. And this ring
modulator is getting a side chain input.
Here we are again with side chain
inputs. And this time on something other
than a compressor. So what a ring
modulator does is I can just move this
out here and show you what it actually
sounds like just by itself without any
side chain
input. That's really weird, right? So,
this is just modulating the volume of
whatever comes through up and down at a
certain frequency. And that frequency
can be really high. If I set this super
low to like 20
hertz, you can hear how it's fluttering.
But as soon as this goes super high,
then you get these weird overtones. So,
strange effect. Sometimes this can be
really cool on certain things. But
instead of having this built-in sine
wave in this case here, cuz usually ring
modulators always use a sine wave to
modulate the volume of whatever comes
through. So instead of using that, you
can tell it to, hey, use this other
audio instead of just a fixed waveform
at a fixed frequency. And a lot of ring
modulators have some sort of side chain
option. I'm using the Mela M ring
modulator, which is free. And I'm
sending it the kick and the snare
through the side chain input, but
rectified. So rectified means that
instead of our waveform going up above
zero and then down below zero, it's only
going to be on one side of the center
line. I can show you visually real quick
what's happening here. So right now
you're hearing the kick and the snare,
right? And now I'm turning on a
rectifier. So that has moved everything
to just one side of the center line. But
it's important that this kind of version
of your kick and snare is being fed into
the ring modulator side chain input. To
do this, I'm using Mwave Shaper, which
is also free. So in Ableton, you can set
this up exactly the same way that I did
here for free. The free melder plugins
are really nice and very precise. So for
this, they are perfect. And here in
Mwave Shaper, by default, this curve
just looks like this. And that means
input is going to be exactly the same as
output. And here I'm saying, hey,
anything above that zero line, just fold
that back
down. And that rectifies our signal. I
don't I could look into like the exact
technical specifics of what is happening
here, but just copy my settings or look
up another ring mod side chain tutorial
where someone explains it in
excruciating detail, but maybe have some
plugin around that gives you an
oscilloscope like this so that you can
check in the end, hey, is what comes out
only on one side of the center line to
get my kick and snare here? Because
remember, we're in the side chain audio
track that I have on on monitoring like
the the thing that everything goes
through. But I have my kick and snare
here for some reason playing. So, how is
that happening? I'm using Ableton's
compressor. You can do it also with
Ableton's gate. And I'm selecting. Here
we go again. Another side chain thing.
I'm selecting, hey, I want to use a side
chain input and I want to use my kick
and snare. And then I'm clicking this
tiny little audition button here. So,
this basically just turns off the entire
compressor and just lets you hear what
the side chain input is. If I turn this
off, then I hear whatever is happening
on this audio track and how it's going
through the compressor and what it
sounds like afterwards. But if I turn
this on, this is completely
ignored and I just hear whatever is
coming from the channel that I've
selected here. So this is kind of a way
how to route audio from anywhere else in
your project to a certain effects chain.
This doesn't need to happen with a
compressor. You can also do this with a
gate because the gate also has a side
chain input. And then here you could
just go, hey, kick and snare. Just make
sure that the gates built-in look ahead
is turned to zero. The compressor also
has a look ahead. Just make sure that's
also on zero.
And and then I forgot to turn on the
little blue listen button
here. And we got our kick and snare. So
that way I'm running the kick and the
snare through this rectifier. And I turn
off the chain activator here because I
don't want to hear that chain. I just
need that rectified signal to send it to
the ring modulator down here. So now in
the ring modulator here, I can say,
"Hey, your side chain input is coming
from the side chain track which we're
on, but I need this exact chain here."
So I can say, "Hey, okay, side chain
track." And then inside the side chain
track, it's like, okay, ah, there's an
there's an effect rack. Um, there are
actually three things you can choose
here. either the chain with the wave
shaper, the chain with the rig
modulator, or the chain that is down
here with nothing on it. So, I'm telling
it, hey, take the sound that's coming
from this chain that has the wave shaper
on it post effects. Postmixer would take
into account that I've turned it off or
how loud this is, but we don't want to
hear it. So, I've turned it off. So, I
got to make sure that here in the ring
modulator side chain input, I say,
"Please take this chain post effects."
So it's getting the affected signal at
the end of this chain as the side chain
input for the ring
modulator and then that is getting added
to the dry signal that is just going
through in parallel. And then we finally
have a ring mod side chain set up and
ready to go. I know that is a lot, but I
wanted you to know how it works and what
exactly is happening. But you can just
copy these settings, have a look at
this, check that this is where the side
chain input is coming from. Have a look
over here that this is set up exactly
like that. And that you have a gate or a
compressor here that has the side chain
input from your kick and snare and has
this listen button on. And make sure
that that first chain is turned off so
you don't hear it. And then you should
be good to go. And both of these plugins
are free and uh very precise and work
perfectly for this purpose. Lastly, I
just want to note that I wouldn't use
this ring mod side chain method
everywhere since it does create
distortion in the signal that you are
ringing mod side chaining. If you had
like a beautiful soft vocal and then
some soft drums, but you ring mod side
chained the drums out of the vocal, it
might distort it in a way that is not
very pleasant. But it really depends on
the type of music that you're making. So
try it out. Maybe it works. Maybe it's
cool. But yeah, this combination of
ringot side chain and then MIDI
triggered volume ducking that is a
little bit early and has a slight fade
in is how I do my side chaining on most
of my heavy tracks. That's it for me for
today. See you again soon. Bye.
Discover the official lyrics, MP3 download, and video download of 'How I Sidechain' by [Artist]. Get high-quality audio and free music options, including remixes and live versions. Perfect for fans seeking the best song experience with easy access to lyrics, MP3 downloads, and video content. Download the latest official track now for an immersive music experience with fast, free MP3 download options. Explore more on your favorite platform and enjoy the song in high-quality audio. Perfect for music lovers looking for free music, official releases, and remixes of 'How I Sidechain'.